


Portrait of the Undivine

by Nebulad



Category: Divinity: Original Sin (Video Games)
Genre: Denial of Feelings, F/M, Pre-Relationship, lovesick sketches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28076964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: Fane snatched his book back, no doubt regretting that his human disguise was fully capable of blushing. “It’s adiagram,and I daresay it’s preferable to gawking at her every time I need to reference something!” he spluttered, and she took a very restrained sip of the ale Beast had dropped in front of her.“Oh aye? So where’s mine then?” Beast asked with a grin.“I hardly need one for each of you, you’re the same thing.”“Well then I’m flattered, but not interested despite your lovesick portrait of me."
Relationships: Fane/Female Godwoken (Divinity: Original Sin)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	Portrait of the Undivine

Rynthiel’s glasses slid down the end of her nose, and she straightened them for what felt like the fifteenth time since she cracked her book. They’d retired to the inn for the evening after an inhumanely long day hunting down Lohar’s mistakes and conspicuously not talking about how all of the Voidwoken were howling after Fane. Beast and Loshe settled in to drink, and she’d taken one to try and mask her fatigue; Fane merely sat and watched them all like he always did.

“Boring book, chief?” Loshe asked, kicking Rynthiel under the table and jolting her badly. “Or just a long day?”

“I don’t even know what I’m reading,” she admitted, peering at the cover. One of Fane’s godawful encyclopedias, of course. “Oh look at that: both, I suppose.”

“If you’d like to drink a little more—” Fane suggested idly.

“Not after last time,” she said tightly. “I’d think you of all people would be foremost against getting me drunk again.”

“Unless he just likes chasing after you,” Beast offered from the end of the table, laughing merrily.  _ Bastard indeed. _

“Or, and do try to keep an open mind here, I have only just discovered both alcohol and adverse reactions to it. I’m in the unique position of having two dwarves, one who holds his alcohol and one who doesn’t—”

“And I distinctly recall the one who doesn’t told you to quit  _ studying  _ her,” she hummed.

“I can no more stop studying you than you all could stop breathing or secreting or decaying,” he returned shortly.

“Clearly,” Loshe offered, peering over his shoulder to his dried out water-swollen notebook. “Hope you draw me as pretty as you draw Ryn.”

“It is  _ not  _ a drawing, it’s a diagram.”

“Are diagrams typically candlelit?”

“It is a  _ referenced  _ diagram.”

“Well we’ll need a tiebreaker then.” Loshe snatched the book out of his hands and he made a noise not unlike Sir Lora at the very thought of wooden houses. “Beast, what do you think?” She tossed him the book and Fane launched himself after it, but didn’t have the reflexes of the prince.

_ “Diagram  _ my ass,” he declared, sliding the book cleanly over to Rynthiel. She only managed to glance at likeness of her and she had to agree: it wasn’t a diagram. He honestly could have given notes to the sod that had taken her official portrait when she’d come of age. Loshe hadn’t exaggerated: she was candlelit, and he’d seemed to catch her mid-laugh with the low light glinting off her glasses and the gold ornaments in her hair. His ability to keep such a transitory moment in his head was an admirable skill _. _

Admirable and  _ curious. _

Fane snatched his book back, no doubt regretting that his human disguise was fully capable of blushing. “It’s a  _ diagram,  _ and I daresay it’s preferable to gawking at her every time I need to reference something!” he spluttered, and she took a very restrained sip of the ale Beast had dropped in front of her. 

“Oh aye? So where’s mine then?” Beast asked with a grin.

“I hardly need one for each of you, you’re the same thing.”

“Well then I’m flattered, but not interested despite your lovesick portrait of me. What about Loshe?”

“Please, I couldn’t take that obnoxious little rodent’s tail and swing him around without hitting a human. I daresay I’ll never want for reference material of them.” Sir Lora chattered in offence, and only because Rynthiel had tuned him out.

“So just Rynnie then?”

“Rynthiel sits far stiller than you clowns. If I have a wealth of material regarding her, it’s only because she doesn’t toss herself around like a blunt weapon.”

“There’s  _ more?!” _ Loshe declared in delight, gearing up to corner Fane and take the book.

“Leave him be, would you?” she asked, setting the tankard that was by and large proportionally ridiculous gently back down on the table. “It’s only a diagram.”

_ “Thank-you,”  _ he agreed, although it didn’t feel like he was agreeing so much as he was angry at everyone present. Rynthiel had hardly done anything, however, besides being an apparently ideal subject.

Loshe rolled her eyes and dropped back into her seat, sticking her tongue out when Fane jammed his notebook protectively back into his pack. “Of course you’d take his side, he’s making Oak’s own rough drafts of you.”

. . . . .

The moment passed, and faded quickly enough that no one commented on how Fane and Rynthiel often shared a room. It was convenient: one or both of them were often up late with books or trading reading material back and forth, so there was no reason to bother the others. He marched wordlessly into their cramped living quarters and sat down stiffly, his human mask still affixed to his head.

“Take off the mask, dear, before I forget what you look like,” she offered, locking the door behind her. She really had no idea what it felt like to shapeshift, being neither an Eternal with a child’s toy nor a mage with an affinity for twisting up their body. She had to imagine it was more comfortable to be himself, however, and it seemed confirmed when the flesh faded from the facade of the mask, and he pulled it off with a grunt.

“Here,” he said shortly, holding out his notebook to her as she passed to get into bed.

She tutted. “Don’t start with this again. I agree with Loshe, you know, if that was a diagram then I have to do some serious rethinking about what Eternal academia was like.” It demonstrated very little about dwarven anatomy besides that a particular dwarf flushed ever so slightly when she was laughing.

“That’s why I’m telling you to look,” he said impatiently. “None of it is untoward or strange. It’s mostly a habit I’ve picked up, since you sit the stillest and make better faces than the others do.”

“Better faces?” she asked skeptically, acquiescing finally and flipping past a few pages about rabbits.

“Shall I take a note every time Loshe’s demon rises? And how am I meant to tell what face Beast is making at all under that bizarre beard of his.” There was one with her bow where she looked solemn and focused, and one where she was puzzling out some strange hunk of armour they came across with her magnifying glass. None were so detailed as the portrait from before, but they were all deeply flattering. Her face was always round and ruddy, her elaborate updo tended to in such loving shorthand that even without full detail it still looked accurate, and her various robes and dresses never as awkward or ill-fitting as she remembered them.

“So what am I meant to take from this?” she asked, finally getting to the page with the portrait. She could have said something about how none of the drawings came with very objective notes. Some with her bow would note the height she would jump, or the number of arrows she used. Some with armour pieces would note items of particular history or value: it was really nothing worth recording, unless one were keeping a meticulous account of her personally.

“Nothing. Only that I’m not being strange.”

“I didn’t think you were, Fane,” she said with a laugh. It wasn’t entirely true, but strange wasn’t the word she would use. She was more or less thinking of their almost accidental encounter on the Lady Vengeance before they’d gotten the ship moving again. “When this is over, you’ll have to come with me to the dwarven kingdom. I need a portrait that doesn’t make me look like a piglet wearing a wig and a poorly-chosen dress.”

“Surely you mean to be Divine. At that point you’ll have whatever dolt Loshe referenced earlier to render better than a sketched diagram.” She couldn’t tell what tone he was taking, but he took back his book and tucked it into his bag without making eye contact. She tried to reign in her surprise: of course she intended to be Divine, but it was the first time he’d discussed her ascension as an inevitability and not something that would only happen in the case that his own didn’t. He seemed...sure, now.

She smiled, pretending as if she hadn’t been silently contemplating him. “Still calling it a diagram?”

“That’s what it  _ is.” _

“Well, if you could find time in your very busy schedule to put together a portrait for me after a diagram like that? Huebert Oak can rot for all I care.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I make [text based games](https://heartforge.itch.io/) that are currently free to play.
> 
> Anyway, I finally played a new video game. Fane wasn't my first romance, it was Beast, but the ending was like weirdly bugged so I'm replaying. Fane was a very good romance and people who like, follow my account will know that I was chomping at the bit for a romance out of time where a man slowly learns to love the world from the perspective of his dear friend, companion, lover. Who knew it just existed and I didn't have to try and fix characters myself. Anyway, what's up with _no one_ romancing Beast?
> 
> It isn't a _very_ romantic short but it's like, supposed to be. Also huge shoutout for Larian making the absolute coolest version of dwarves and elves ever. The second I was like oh I can give Rynthiel this sick ass beauty queen hairdo? I was all in.


End file.
